Gold Coast’s best primary schools ranked

The Gold Coast’s best primary schools have been revealed based on how they fared in NAPLAN last year. See where your school ranks. FULL LIST

AB Paterson College in Arundel and The Southport School have both achieved perfect scores in a list ranking Gold Coast primary schools.

The two private schools were given a rating of 100 by the Better Education website, which compared schools’ NAPLAN scores in 2019 to provide information on the best schools and how they compared around the state.

Three more Gold Coast schools – Emmanuel College, Somerset College and All Saints Anglican School – received near perfect scores of 99.

Beechmont State School, Tallebudgera State School and Bellevue Park State School were the top ranked government schools, with all three awarded a score of 98.

The Better Education website is run independently of government and describes its aim as providing “informative and comparative school results including school rankings or ratings and lists of best performing schools, to parents wanting to make choices about schooling for their children”.

The overall position for the schools was determined by analysis of Year 5 results.

The best overall score is an index of performance, not a ranking, the best score is 100 and the worst is 60, according to the independent website.

However, exclusive analysis by News Corp last year revealed Queensland performance declined in more than half of all NAPLAN categories and scored lower than the national average in every year level and in every subject.

While writing scores improved across the board since 2018, results in Year 5,7 and 9 were still lower than the subject’s 2011 base year.

A Department of Education spokesman slammed the reliability of the list.

“The department does not support the creation of simplistic league tables based on a narrow

measure of academic performance,” the spokesman said.

“These measures without context often do not summarise the diversity of education that schools provide.”

Instead, the spokesman pointed parents to resources including the “Choosing a School” page on the Education Queensland website, or the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority’s My School website.